How to Write Every Day

I've read a bunch of different interviews with established authors lately about their daily writing habits. Haruki Murakami blew my mind with his intensely physical daily routine, which includes running 10K or swimming 1500m every day! Seriously, click through and read about it. Murakami takes discipline to a whole new level.

For me, writing happens every day in one of these forms:

• words towards my WIP, ideally ~2K
• writing a flash piece, which I did last week on Lost Witch's blog
• a blog entry
• writing notes for a beta read
• revising a WIP
• making notes on my iphone while I "watch" my kids at the park

So, I give myself a few choices. Some, like working on a first draft of a WIP, are pure creative indulgences. I write and write until my eyes are so sore I can't stare at the screen. I try not to edit as I go. I just let the words pour out. Other tasks, like beta reading or revising take more of a critical mindset. And when I'm feeling chatty, there's always the blog.

What I like about having a lot of choices at  hand is that I know I will accomplish my goal of writing something every day, because I'm not locked in. Some of the writing tasks are longer, some are shorter. Some are more intense than others. But if I open up my WIP and am not immediately ready to type, I'm far more likely to move on to another writing assignment than hammer it out. They all need to be accomplished, after all. The schedule is up to me.

And every day, no matter what I end up writing, I do one other critical task: I read. Again, I try to have options, but always, every day, I put something new into my brain (even if it's only one page of a book), so that tomorrow I'll be able to spit something else out when I sit down to write. Reading is like homework for writers. Don't skip it, or there's no way to ace the writing test.